Effects of Novel Conceptual Combination on Creativity

Two experiments revealed that solving novel conceptual combination problems could enhance performance in a subsequent test of creativity. The evidence also showed that the beneficial effects of solving novel conceptual combination problems were mediated in part by the use of novel conceptual combination strategies. However, the positive effect of the novel conceptual combination training on divergent thinking was found only among males, probably because the creativity measure used in the experiment was biased against female participants. These findings were discussed in terms of their theoretical significance and implications for teaching creativity.     

Conceptual Combinations and Subsequent Creativity

Conceptual combination has been advocated as an important component of creativity, but relatively little research has investigated its importance. Two experiments were designed to extend previous research on the relationship between performance on conceptual combination tasks and subsequent performance on creativity tasks. Both experiments involved the generation of category exemplars and manipulated the type of conceptual combination experience and whether the items presented were related or unrelated to one another. In the first experiment, this was followed by a brainstorming task (divergent thinking) and in the second experiment by a creative problem solving task (convergent thinking). Contrary to expectations, the condition that required conceptual combinations did not enhance the generation of the number and originality of exemplars. As predicted, exposure to unrelated items led to more original products than related ones. The conceptual combination task with related items was predictive of performance on the creative problem solving task but not the divergent thinking task. Performance on the divergent task was related to the generation of exemplars for unrelated items. These results suggest that the conceptual combination task taps creative problem solving rather than divergent creativity.     

Conceptual Convergence in Creativity: Incubation and Brain Disease State

Fifty years have passed since Guilford presented his seminal presidential address to the American Psychological Association. Those years have been dominated by 2 parallel paradigms: the cognitive and the psychodynamically influenced. The differences between these 2 paradigms emerges both on a theoretical and methodological basis. Guilford made lasting contributions to the construction of links between the 2 paradigms. Three of these links are dealt with in this article: (a) the notion that certain people tend to lean more toward visual thinking, whereas others utilize more verbal thinking; (b) the necessity for more research on the phenomenon of incubation; and (c) the growing relevance of implicating brain structure and function constellations in, and their relevance to, categories of abilities.     

The Construct of Creativity: Structural Model for Self‐Reported Creativity Ratings

Several thousand subjects completed self‐report questionnaires about their own creativity in 56 discrete domains. This sample was then randomly divided into three subsamples that were subject to factor analyses that compared an oblique model (with a set of correlated factors) and a hierarchical model (with a single second‐order, or hierarchical, factor subsuming all of the first order factors). After model refinement, both models were then tested on a confirmation sample. The hierarchical model had a better fit with the data than the oblique model, providing support for theories that have proposed a hierarchical structure to creativity, such as the Amusement Park Theoretical Model. The analysis provided evidence of both an over‐arching general factor and seven more specific General Thematic Areas of creative performance (Artistic‐Verbal, Artistic‐Visual, Entrepreneur, Interpersonal, Math/Science, Performance, and Problem‐Solving).     

Autophotographic Individuality Predicts Creativity: A Seven‐Year Follow‐up

Approximately seven years after completing a photographic essay about the self, 44 adults were surveyed about their lives, current creative activities, and their work values. In accord with prediction, those who devised richer, more multidimensional and creative photo essays‐the more individualistic — were engaged in more creative lifestyles as adults and rated creativity as a job value higher than their less individualistic peers. Thus, unique self‐portrayals through photography were shown to have impressive predictive validity well beyond the college years.     

概念组合的理论模型

概念组合是将两个或多个概念组合成一个新概念的过程,生成的新概念被称为组合概念。组合概念的解释策略及影响因素已成为概念研究中的热点问题。研究者相继提出了关系竞争理论、双重加工理论和约束理论等模型。但是,这些理论模型只能解释特定的实验现象,对某些稳定的实验现象（如涌现特征、范畴效应等）却缺乏解释力度。文章提出,未来的研究应该整合已有的实验现象和理论模型,关注概念组合的时间进程,深入考察语境的作用,并系统地研究组合概念的涌现特征和范畴效应。     

Artistic and Everyday Creativity: An Act‐Frequency Approach

Scholars often distinguish everyday creativity and creativity in more formal domains, such as the arts. However, everyday creativity has been rather neglected in research. This paper compares artistic and everyday creativity. Three studies examine the content of behavior in artistic and everyday creativity, as well as similarities and differences in their relationships with personality traits, psychological well‐being, and psychopathology. Typical artistic creativity acts referred to time investment in the arts, generation of art works, and achievement in the arts, whereas typical everyday creativity acts concerned humor and self‐expression in daily activities. Both kinds of creativity were related to openness to experience, a personality trait described as the disposition towards creativity. However, artistic creativity was related to higher rates of psychopathology, while everyday creativity was related to extraversion, conscientiousness, and personal growth.     

Non‐Cognitive Constructs and Self‐Reported Creativity by Domain

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which non‐cognitive constructs (personality, thinking styles, motivation, and psychological well‐being) would predict self‐reported creativity across different domains among 266 college students. Consistent with hypotheses, openness, legislative thinking styles, and intrinsic motivation were significant predictors of overall self‐reported creativity and across several domains. Extraversion was also a key predictor. Some other relationships consistent with past research (such as disagreeableness and math/science creativity) were also noted.     

具有创造成就的科学家关于创造的概念结构

运用Q分类及多尺度分析方法,研究具有创造成就的科学家关于创造成就的概念结构。被试是30名来自物理、化学、数学、地学和生命科学领域的具有创造成就的科学家。研究发现,具有创造成就的科学家关于创造成就的概念结构由“成就取向/内心体验取向”、“主动进取/踏实肯干”两个维度构成;取得科学创造成就的重要特征是“成就取向”和“主动进取”。作者进一步讨论了主动进取对于取得创造性成就的意义     

Off‐Task Social Breaks and Group Creativity

This study investigates the effect of off‐task breaks, where individuals engage in a collective off‐task activity, on group creativity. Using an experimental method comprising 36 groups of 5 individuals, the relationships between different types of off‐task group break and performance in creative tasks post‐break are explored. When compared to the no‐break case, it is seen that off‐task breaks, in which all individuals participate in the group activity, lead to more original ideas being generated post‐break. On the other hand, individual incubation breaks and self‐organizing group breaks, lead to lower levels of post‐break idea originality when compared with the no‐break case. This research thus highlights the positive benefits of off‐task breaks involving full member participation, on the creative process in groups.     

Students' Multi‐Modal Re‐Presentations of Scientific Knowledge and Creativity

The paper brings the results of a project that passed on to students the opportunity for re‐presenting their acquired knowledge via the construction of multi‐modal ‘learning resources’. These ‘learning resources’ substituted for lectures and books and became the official learning sources in the classroom. The rational for the project was multiple: a. It was expected that the process of re‐contextualizing the scientific concepts into students' lifeworlds, their metaphors and into their everyday language, would benefit both, the creators and the consumers, b. Students were expected to develop multiliteracies in addition to gaining authorship and c. The open and encouraging learning environment that enabled multiple and multimodal ways of presentation was expected to promote small c creativity to be expressed in the diversified natures of the constructed materials. The results indicate that the stimulating and encouraging environment did promote creative divergence in students' re‐presented products. This was found to be true for Relative Creativity (number of higher creativity products as compared to lower ones), and Diversified Creativity (changing the nature of the constructed product from semester to semester). These materials as learning resources were shown to be as effective as lectures and the construction period was shown to add to students' knowledge gains. An interesting effect of frontal lectures was found which is attributed to possible different ways of knowledge organization that are induced under different learning conditions.     

Upper‐Body Strength and Political Egalitarianism: Twelve Conceptual Replications

Animal models of conflict behavior predict that an organism's behavior in a conflict situation is influenced by physical characteristics related to abilities to impose costs on adversaries. Stronger and larger organisms should be more motivated to seek larger shares of resources and higher places in hierarchies. Previous studies of human males have suggested that measures of upper‐body strength are associated with measures of support for inequality including Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), a measure of individual differences in support for group‐based hierarchies. However, other studies have failed to replicate this association. In this article, we reexamine the link between upper‐body strength and support for inequality using 12 different samples from multiple countries in which relevant measures were available. These samples include student and locally representative samples with direct measures of physical strength and nationally representative samples with self‐reported measures related to muscularity. While the predicted correlation does not replicate for every single available measure of support for inequality, the overall data pattern strongly suggests that for males, but not females, upper‐body strength correlates positively with support for inequality.     

Promoting Creativity at Work: The Role of Problem‐Solving Demand

We propose that problem‐solving demand (PSD) is an important job attribute for employees' creative performance. Applying job design theory, we examined the relationship between PSD and employee creativity. The theorised model was tested with data obtained from a sample of 270 employees and their supervisors from three Chinese organisations. Regression results revealed that PSD was positively related to creativity, and this relationship was mediated by creative self‐efficacy. Additionally, intrinsic motivation moderated the relationship between PSD and creative self‐efficacy such that the relationship was stronger for individuals with high rather than low intrinsic motivation. We discuss our findings, implications for practice, and future research.     

Mathematical Creativity: A Combination of Domain-general Creative and Domain-specific Mathematical Skills

Creativity is an understudied topic in elementary school mathematics research. Nevertheless, we argue that creativity plays an important role in mathematics, but that more research is needed to understand this relation. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate this relation, specifically between domain-general creativity, domain-specific mathematical creativity, and mathematical ability. Measures for these constructs were administered to 342 Dutch fourth graders. In order to examine the nature of the relation between creativity and mathematics, two competing models were tested, using Structural Equation Modeling. The results indicated that models in which general creativity and mathematical ability both predict mathematical creativity fitted the data better than models in which mathematical and general creativity predict mathematical ability. This study showed that both general creativity and mathematical ability are important to think creatively in mathematics.     

Conceptual Integration of Arithmetic Operations With Real‐World Knowledge: Evidence From Event‐Related Potentials

Research on language processing has shown that the disruption of conceptual integration gives rise to specific patterns of event‐related brain potentials (ERPs)—N400 and P600 effects. Here, we report similar ERP effects when adults performed cross‐domain conceptual integration of analogous semantic and mathematical relations. In a problem‐solving task, when participants generated labeled answers to semantically aligned and misaligned arithmetic problems (e.g., 6 roses + 2 tulips  = ? vs. 6 roses + 2 vases  = ?), the second object label in misaligned problems yielded an N400 effect for addition (but not division) problems. In a verification task, when participants judged arithmetically correct but semantically misaligned problem sentences to be “unacceptable,” the second object label in misaligned sentences elicited a P600 effect. Thus, depending on task constraints, misaligned problems can show either of two ERP signatures of conceptual disruption. These results show that well‐educated adults can integrate mathematical and semantic relations on the rapid timescale of within‐domain ERP effects by a process akin to analogical mapping.     

Rewards,Intrinsic Motivation,and Creativity: A Case Study of Conceptual and Methodological Isolation

Three decades of research have failed to produce general agreement concerning the effects of reward on creativity. We believe that the problem stems not from any great complexity of research findings, but primarily from the clash between romantic and behaviorist worldviews concerning basic human nature. Isolation of these research camps has produced narrow perspectives and failures to correct persisting methodological flaws. Research correcting these flaws suggests that rewards for novel performance increase intrinsic motivation and creativity, whereas rewards for conventional performance decrease intrinsic motivation and creativity. Creative motivational orientation, enhanced by rewards, strongly affects innovative performance.     

The role of behavioral mind‐sets in goal‐directed activity: Conceptual underpinnings and empirical evidence

The cognitive and motor behavior that people perform in the course of pursuing a goal can induce a mind-set that persists to influence the strategy they use to attain very different goals in unrelated situations. Although the strategies governed by a mind-set are typically applied consciously and deliberately, they are performed without awareness of the reasons for their selection. Research in both social psychology and consumer behavior exemplifies the impact of mind-sets on comprehension, judgments, and decision making, thus providing evidence of the scope and diversity of their effects.